So there are a few things that could make it cheaper for us all to
afford prescription drugs and insurance. Here are a few things that can
be done to do just that.
Free trade on health insurance: This is very basic. Health insurance
is sold both here in the United States and also in the countries of Europe and
Asia. Usually though, European health insurance caters to the rich while
the rest of the populace relies on government care. In the United States,
the insurances companies must be licensed in each State and they must abide by
a certain level of prescribed coverage based on the law. This in effect
creates mini monopolies on health care for each State. So for this to
work, a universal standard for what is covered under the most basic health
coverage must be established. Once this is accomplished, the insurance
companies can sell across state lines and international borders. The
result would be lower costs due to the fact that health insurance companies
would not have to be established in each State or country (thanks to electronic
billing) and thus these companies can settle in a particular State or country
that is the most business friendly. This saves money and allows them to
either increase their services and/or make their premiums cheaper. Also,
because they now can sell to people globally, they have a larger group of
people paying for their services which means more money to go around.
This will also result in not only cheaper care for the people in the
United States, but will also make private health care more affordable in other
countries too.
More OTC's and Generics: Here we have something that is
fairly standard when it comes to making health care cheaper. Generics are drugs
that are copies of brand name drugs once the patent runs out (as such they are
typically cheaper than their brand counterparts). In the United States,
these generics typically are allowed to be sold for a specified number of years
before the FDA says they cannot be sold anymore (this also may be due to a
superior generic that has come to market). However, Canada allows such
drugs to be sold much longer which results in cheaper health care for their
people. So in this case, increase the number of generics and the amount
of time they are available to consumers and that will save the people money.
Additionally, there are many drugs that
can be changed into over the counter medications (OTC's) which are drugs that
do not require a prescription. Things like allergy nasal sprays, and
stomach acid reducers can easily be shifted from prescription drugs to OTC’s.
As such, once a medication becomes an over the counter product the price
for said drug plummets because the drug does not have to abide by as many
regulations and restrictions as their prescription drug counterparts.
This again means cheaper health care as the drugs become more affordable.
Let them make more drugs: Apparently each year, drug
companies must ask permission to produce a drug in a certain quantity.
Once the FDA gives the approval, the drug company can only produce that
amount of their drug with no more and no less being made for that given year.
The original goal of this was to reduce the chances of price gouging by
the pharmaceutical companies, but it has the negative effect of artificially
raising prices of drugs. What I mean by this, is that if said drug could not
meet demand for that given year, by the laws of supply and demand, the cost of
that drug would go up. If the drug company was to produce more than demand
required the price of that drug would drop, but in return other drugs that
company produces will have their prices raised or the drug next year will be
sold at a higher cost for the drug company to make up for the lost revenue.
Obviously, causing drug prices to rise is a bad thing, so my solution is
to allow drug companies to produce as much product as they want per year.
They can still set a minimum if they expect demand to be low, but can go
beyond that minimum if they choose to keep up supply if demand increases.
As such, it keeps the drug costs down.
Conclusion: So these are some basic solutions.
The more OTC's, generics and drug companies being able to make more of a
product are simple reforms that can take place within less than a year if implemented.
The free trade one though has to be negotiated on for it to go through
and is thus, harder to implement. However, these are all options to
decreasing the costs of health care which would work. In fact the more
OTC's, generics and allowing more of the drugs being produced removes our
reliance on prescription drug insurance to a certain degree as certain drugs
become much more affordable. So we can make health care cheaper, it is
all a matter of actually putting the reforms into practice.
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